Plump Fiction

Plump Fiction is cultural cannibalism twice removed--it quotes from a director whose work is already full of quotes from other directors. It's also yet another wretched piece of genre satire wherein the filmmakers think that regurgitating scenes and characters from other movies is the same as having something funny to say about them. This one combines the Quentin Tarantino-penned Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Natural Born Killers into one sloppy mess that also includes nods at Clerks, Forrest Gump, Nell And The Piano. Unfortunately, nods are about all writer/director Bob Koherr can manage, sluggishly pacing an 82 minute movie with about as much wit as your average Mad magazine movie parody. Listening to Paul Dinello and Tommy Davidson try to ape the rat-a-tat dialogue between John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson only makes you long for a slice of the real thing. There are bound to be a few token hits in a film like Plump Fiction--Pamela Segall's nice gloss on Juliette Lewis's slinky trailer trash, for instance--but mostly it's a tedious bit of opportunism. At least the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker crew (Airplane!) had the good sense mainly to parody bad films. Not recommended. (S. Renshaw)